Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Height With Friends - Swiss Chard, Vol. 1 (SpliceToday.com)

Height With Friends have been on a good run since last year, releasing Baltimore Highlands, the companion remix album, and they have another album in the can for release later this year. In between, they got together with SpliceToday.com to release a free download release, the first in a series called Swiss Chard (incidentally, I tried Swiss chard for the first time last year and it can be really good, my wife cooks it up with garlic and rice). A few years ago, Height used to do a series of EPs called Utility Fog between albums, so I guess that's kind of what this series is going to be like, too. All of Height's albums are short, usually a half hour or less, and as a stopgap EP-type release this is even short, 5 songs in under 9 minutes. So it's not really substantial in and of itself or a good intro to Height, but if you already like his stuff there's some good tracks here to throw in a playlist with his other records. It also features a lot of his kind of abstract, chant-y material, so it's not as overtly hip hop as some of his other releases (although the last track is a Schoolly D cover/homage). Like the other With Friends releases, this features contributions from Mickey Free, AK Slaughter and P.T. Burnem, among others. Height With Friends are performing at the Windup Space this Saturday, and setting off on a national tour in a couple weeks, and Bmore Musically Informed recently posted a preview of a few tracks from their upcoming album, Bed Of Seeds, which will be out on May 1st.